Harry Potter and the Blood of the Emerald
by The Mill of KeyTone
Summary: Harry Potter enters his 6th year at Hogwarts. What new challenges await him as the War starts to break? Who can offer him solace as he battles with his own demons? And finally, how can he face what he knows is coming? Shipping: HHr


Harry Potter and the Blood of the Emerald

Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to someone else. I'm just borrowing them for a little jaunt through my imagination.

Summary: Harry Potter enters his 6th year at Hogwarts. What new dangers can Voldemort offer this year? What adventures will Harry survive?  This is my first fic, but no mercy please. Let me know what you honestly think. My E-Mail address is KeatonMill@charter.net

Ships Applicable: Harry/Hermione… for now. Probably some more later when I come up with them.

Chapter 1: Night Over Little Whinging

            Night had fallen over Privet drive so fast, it didn't feel like summer, even though it was early July. The street wasn't completely dark, however. Streetlamps illuminated much of the road and lawns, and the bright moon kept the dark shapes of the houses visible.

            The occupants of the houses had all fallen asleep long ago, and were peacefully dreaming. Miss Number One was having a pleasant dream about making a wonderfully complex mushroom strew perfectly, while Mister Number Two was frolicking happily around a mulberry bush with his girlfriend. The Number Threes were dreaming about finally finding a way to mow their lawn without actually stepping on it. Mister Number Three wanted to use hi-power lasers, while Mrs. Number Three's solution involved As Seen On TV trimmer products and a very low, very slow-moving aircraft. Maybe a helicopter would do the trick. Miss Number Five was running away from the police. They kept saying it was against the law to have a beautiful house. She smiled and said, "Well, I must be a hardened criminal then." She kept running, but somehow found time to stop in little stores full of home improvement products and ideas. She bought out their entire stocks without batting an eye.

            Mister Number Four's dream involved a fantastic land where everyone needed drills all the time, and only he could provide them. He ran around Screw Land, pulling out different size drills from his pocket and throwing them at his customers, and watched his wallet grow fatter and fatter. He chortled in his sleep as he discovered a whole new neighborhood that had lots and lots of screws to screw in, but no drills to drill holes for the screws to be screwed into. As his wallet became too heavy for him to carry around, he placed a padlock on it and put up a sign next to it that read, "FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF VERNON." He pulled out another wallet and kept selling.

            Mrs. Number Four's dream was equally as pleasant. She was dreaming about growing up in a world which didn't include her weird sister. Her life no longer included all of the problems her sister and her good-for-nothing husband had caused. No more owls, no more moving pictures, and no more m-… even in her dreams she couldn't bear to think about That Stuff. But she didn't have to anymore, as it didn't exist in this world. There wasn't any funny stuff going on at her house, there wasn't anything to worry about besides the world she knew and loved. Best of all, her family consisted of her husband and her wonderful son, and she didn't even know that… other boy… had had a possibility of existing.

Little Mister Number Four (who in actuality was quite larger than his father) was happily dreaming about punching people in the park with his friends. He liked to keep things simple.

Unlike the other houses, however, there was another occupant of Number Four, Privet Drive, and his night wasn't going nearly so well. He tossed and turned in his sleep, and his slow breathing slowly changed to short, ragged gasps. The owl sleeping on the perch on his desk woke when he started mumbling softly, and looked at him lovingly (as much as owls CAN look at someone lovingly). He started to shake slightly in his sleep, and as he did so, several of the lighter objects in the room – the quill and parchment on the desk below him, the wand on the table beside him – began to shake as well. The owl hooted softly, and waited. She knew what was about to happen, since this had happened every night that the boy had slept since they returned to this room.

In his dreams, the boy was running. Not running away from anything, but towards something. He was in an empty atrium, a broken fountain in the middle. There were fireplaces all around the outside walls, but only one was burning. The boy looked at the fire for a moment, and thought he saw a small wrinkled head cackling in it. He looked back at it and it had gone out, but the one next to it had sprung to life, and a girl with great bushy hair seemed to be worried about something. He looked a third time, however, and she was gone. The ceiling, normally blue, tonight was black and pulsing with strange red and green symbols. He rushed towards one end of it, past the security desk, and jumped into a lift. He jabbed the number nine button and the golden grilles of the lift shut, painfully slow. A moment before they shut completely, he thought he could see a hook-nosed, sallow-faced man standing behind the security desk looking menacing.

The lift jerked downwards, jangling and clanging throughout the entire descent. He knew that there wasn't anyone to hear him, but somehow, he was worried about the noise anyway. The scar on the boy's forehead twinged mightily, he knew he didn't have much time.

As soon as the lift stopped, and the grilles began to open, the boy leapt out, and started running down a corridor decorated only with torches. These were no ordinary torches, however. When the boy looked at them, it appeared as if there were heads burning in each one. He saw a man in one, who looked amazingly like himself. He saw a woman in another whose eyes matched his own. He even saw Miss Number Four in one of them, although he didn't realize it was her.

At the end of the corridor stood a plain black door. As he approached it, it swung inward to let him inside. The door closed behind him and he found himself in a circular room with a dozen black doors around the wall, and blue torches, this time without heads inside, providing the only light.

As soon as the door shut, the wall began to turn, faster and faster, until the individual torches became just a stripe of blue on an otherwise black surface. As quickly as it had begun, however, it stopped.

The doors had changed now. Eleven of them had fiery red Xs on them, but the door directly in front of the boy was still unmarked. He ran through it and to his destination.

The room he was in was large, dimly lit, and rectangular. The center of it was sunken below the level he was on, so that it formed a great stone pit about twenty feet down. The floor sloped downward, with benches running around to the left and right, so that the room appeared to be an amphitheater, or the courtroom the boy knew was above him somewhere. In the center of the pit stood a stone dais, and upon this dais rose a stone archway, although calling it a sand archway was a bit more accurate. It looked incredibly old. Its stones were cracked, and weathered, and it looked as if large chunks were about to fall off of it at any time. The boy was sure he could almost see through some of the chunks to the other side. Hanging from the archway was an equally ancient and tattered black veil which was moving slightly, as if someone had just touched it from the other side.

The boy slowly walked down to the bottom of the pit, and looked at the archway again. It looked much larger and more impressive from this angle, and he had the strangest desire to step up onto the dais and investigate it more closely. As he was contemplating doing this, however, he thought he heard small mutterings from the other side of the veil, and once again, it looked as if someone on the other side had disturbed it. He walked around the dais, but there wasn't anything there. He walked around to the other side, and turned to leave when he saw something moving from out of the corner of his eye.

Two people, a man and a woman, were standing on the top level of the benches and dueling furiously. The man was tall, very thin, had long black hair and a small smile on his face. The woman was even thinner than the man, and also had long black hair, though hers looked shaggier and unkempt. She had heavily lidded eyes and a taunting laugh was coming from her mouth.

"Sirius, watch out!" somebody said, though the boy did not know who.

The boy watched as the two battled back and forth, and suddenly, he had a very bad feeling about the man. He tried to yell out his name, tried to move to warn him, but everything had slowed down to a crawl. The fight continued back and forth, the two combatants laughing and taunting each other as they sent differently colored beams of light towards each other. She sent a jet of red light at him and he ducked.

"Come on, you can do better than that!" he yelled. The sentence seemed to take ages to echo around the empty room. The boy's heart filled with a sense of immense dread, as he knew what was about to happen. He was too late.

The second jet of red light hit him squarely on the chest.

"SIRIUS!!!" somebody yelled.

His body flew backwards, as if pulled by some invisible force. Her work complete, the woman let out one last horrible, arrogant laugh and vanished. The boy looked around and he could see that the black veil was moving as if there was a vast wind blowing it inwards. It was weird. Although moments before when he had looked at the other side and saw nothing, even though the black veil was almost horizontal, he could only see black through the archway. But he didn't have time to worry about what the veil was doing. He watched the man's body fly backwards towards it, still in slow motion, as the voices he thought he had heard earlier grew in number and in volume. The boy knew something terrible would happen if the man flew through the veil, as he was bound to do in a couple of seconds. If he could stop the body from going through, everything would still be ok, he'd still be ali…

"SIRIUS! NO!!!!!!" somebody yelled again.

And suddenly time speeded back up again, as the boy knew what he had to do. He leapt up onto the stone dais and stood between the man's body and the veil. As the body approached, the boy tensed himself. The body flew into him with such force that the boy was knocked over. He managed to grab the body's hand, however, and he held on as hard as he could. The man's body whipped around and the rest of him flew into the archway, but stopped. The boy had succeeded. Or had he? The pull from the invisible force was incredible, and the boy doubted he could hold on to the hand for long, let alone pull him out of the archway. He looked up from the man's body to look at the archway. The veil was horizontal now, and all he could see was black. Blacker than night. Blacker than anything he had ever known before. Except… he thought he saw another face he recognized… another boy he once knew, from a long time ago… He looked at it and the face changed into a man with black, similarly mussed up hair. He was the spitting image of the boy, except without the lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead.

"SIRIUS BLACK!" came that voice.

He could feel his grip slipping. His palms were sweaty and he couldn't hold on much longer. He could hear somebody yelling again, louder and louder. He raised his hands to his head to block out the noise, but realized too late what he had done. The body, free of any obstruction, flew away from the boy and into the archway. As soon as the man's lifeless form had cleared it, the veil dropped back to its original position, and the voices quieted down to a mumble once more. Everything wasn't back to normal, however. The scar on the boy's forehead seemed like it was about to burst open, it hurt so much, and that yell, that yell was still there growing louder and sadder and angrier and worse and worse and worse and-

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo…."

Harry Potter woke up in his bed, realized he was the one screaming, as he had for the past thirteen nights, and stopped. Miss Number One, Mister Number Two, Mister and Mrs. Number Three, Mister and Little Mister Number Four, and Miss Number Five all rolled over in their sleep and continued dreaming.

Mrs. Number Four woke up, however, as that scream had awoken something in her, as it had every night in the days since Harry had come home. She sighed, and wondered whose death he was reliving every night. Her dislike for all of _his_ kind stopped her maternal instincts from caring for long, however, and she drifted back off to sleep.

Harry wasn't so lucky. He tossed and turned in bed, and finally got up and started pacing the room. He hadn't had the dreams at Hogwarts, but as soon as he had gotten home, he started having them again that first night. He had only been home a couple of weeks, and therefore only had been having them for a couple of weeks, but already he dreaded falling asleep at night. He wasn't sure if the Dursleys heard his nighttime cries or not, as they barely spoke to him anymore. When they picked him up from Kings Cross Station, several members of the Order of the Phoenix had threatened them severely enough that they were now horribly frightened of saying anything to him at all. He didn't find himself caring much, though. Much like Professor Snape's (Harry's least favorite teacher) treatment of him over the past year, he found being ignored suited him much better to being harassed and punished. Plus, Harry wouldn't have to worry about the Dursleys interfering with his schoolwork, when he received it.

The problem was that he now had nothing to do. He hadn't received his OWL scores yet, and as he needed those scores in order to sign up for NEWT level classes, he didn't have any homework to do either. Neither could he practice. Since the sudden forced break-up of the DA he had wanted to continue practicing and building his magical skills, especially since school had gotten out. He felt that it was even more necessary now that he knew that he was destined to battle Voldemort to the death at one point. 

He had read through all the Defense Against the Dark Arts books he had been assigned from earlier years, though they didn't tell him much that he didn't already know. _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection_ was very basic, written for first and second years, and as it had been assigned by Professor Quirrel, who, as it turned out, was being possessed by Voldemort, Harry wasn't sure how accurate the information contained inside was. Gilderoy Lockhart's books seemed to have some useful information, but it was extremely hard to find amongst the puffed up tails of his fantastic exploits, and Harry only managed to read_ Voyages with Vampires _and _Wanderings with Werewolves_ before getting sick of his writing style. Besides, Harry thought, I can find out all the information I need about werewolves from Lupin. _Dark Creatures and How to Defeat Them_, the book Lupin himself had assigned, contained a lot of information, but since Lupin was a pretty competent teacher, he already knew most of it. Moody's imposter hadn't assigned them a book, preferring the class to write down notes "so I know where you get your information from." As for _Defensive Magical Theory_, Harry decided he would rather face several of Ginny's Bat-Bogey Hexes before being subjected to that piece of filth again.

He managed to busy himself every morning for an hour or so with the _Daily Prophet_, but little of it interested him anymore. In the two weeks since the public recognizing of Voldemort's return, it was filled with stories about troubles at Azkaban, the wizard prison, information on basic defense, and wild letters from readers claiming to have seen Death Eaters in Diagon Alley or the Dark Mark in smoke patterns. The _Prophet_ DID contain _some_ useful information, at least. Dumbledore had been reinstated to all of the official positions he had held before he had left, and Cornelius Fudge had publicly acknowledged his mistakes. Fudge promised not to fudge things up any more ("Well… You know what I mean," quoted the article) and, "in a move widely regarded as brilliant, considering the state of security at Azkaban," placed the recaptured Death Eaters in an "undisclosed" location. Harry agreed that this was a good idea, though he wondered what place _other_ than Azkaban could be made secure against Death Eaters. He remembered Hagrid telling him that Hogwarts was the safest place in the wizarding world, and also knew that Voldemort was too afraid to go near the place while Dumbledore was the Headmaster. Still, he couldn't see Dumbledore allowing Fudge to send ten of Voldemort's most loyal Death Eaters to the very place where both he and Harry lived.

He had been spending much of the days walking around the neighborhood, as he did last summer. He liked getting out and breathing fresh, non-Dursleyfied air and seeing what everyone else was up to. He found it very easy to make himself unnoticeable by walking slowly and not directly looking at anyone else passing on the street. Although the neighbors still gave him nervous glances as they passed by, they didn't bother criticizing him out loud because he wasn't actually causing any harm. Dudley was in charge of that. Of course, Harry was quite sure that all of the neighbors passing him by weren't actually neighbors, at least not in the normal sense. At least once a day he would pass _someone_ who would give him a little smile and a wink. He usually saw Mrs. Figg, the Squib who had come to Harry and Dudley's aid last year, out tending to her lawn in the mornings, but if he approached her to ask for tea or to talk, she always whispered to him "Not yet."

He liked to spend time at the park by Magnolia Road, the same one he had observed Dudley's gang from the year before. He thought that it was funny that they still hadn't broken the last remaining swing; though Harry thought that this was out of laziness rather than charity. Whatever the reason, however, Harry almost felt as if he was guarding the place during the day, as Dudley, still as terrified of Harry as ever, refused to lead his gang to where Harry was. Parents noticed that when Harry was sitting under the tree near the sandbox, their kids didn't come home with bloody noses or black eyes, and for that, although they were loathe to admit it, they were thankful to him.

Harry yawned and rolled over. His eyes fell upon the calendar he had on the wall counting down the days before he could return to school once again. He remembered that today was the day he was supposed to write to Lupin. He had promised the Order that he would write them at least once every three days to ensure his well-being at the Dursleys, but he always addressed the letters to Remus Lupin. So far, he had written a couple, and had only received cursory responses back, though they had mentioned "preparations for secure communication". Hedwig had always come back within a few hours of her departure, which lead him to believe she didn't have to fly all the way to London to contact the Order. He knew that last summer he had been watched by a member of the Order during the entire holidays. Last summer he resented the fact that he had been watched without his knowledge, but this summer he was more comfortable with it. He remembered the load of trouble he had gotten into when defending himself and Dinky-Duddykins from dementors last summer, and thought that, on the whole, it was best to have someone who could do magic at least somewhat near him.

He had also heard from his friends, though they too didn't send him too much information. His letters from Ron and Hermione sat on the desk next to his quill and blank parchment.

_Dear Harry_

_Hullo, mate. I'm just writing to make sure you got back to the Dursleys' house alright. We've just gotten back to the Burrow, but I'm leaving again very soon. Don't be mad, please, but once again I'm not supposed to say TOO much in this letter. Don't worry, though, mate, because I'm also sure that I'll be able to speak freely soon. Dumbledore told Hermione and me why you have to keep going back to that awful place every year, but I doubt you'll have to stay there for long, though I can't say where you'll end up._

_Keep your spirits up, mate!_

_Ron_

_Dear Harry_

_I hope this letter finds you well. I've returned home safely, after making a couple of stops along the way, and I'm just about to depart once again. I've been warned by our good friend not to include certain details of events here (like last summer, I'm afraid), but I'm also told that we won't have to worry about interception for very long. I don't know what he's planning, but I do hope it involves your removal from the Dursleys' place soon! He told us (Ron and I) why you have to stay there, and from what I've been able to find out about what he did you shouldn't have to be there for very long. Then again, keeping you there also keeps you safe._

_I really hope you aren't beating yourself up over Snuffles. I'd like to talk to you about it, but I'm afraid that even if you want to (which I'm not sure you will) I won't be able to until I see you. But once again, hopefully that will be soon!_

_Thinking of you,_

_Hermione_

Harry was slightly mollified by these letters. Although they were maddening and raised lots of questions (what was going on THIS summer? Where are Ron and Hermione going? Are they going together? Can they be together without ripping each other apart?), they promised that more information would be coming, and both seemed confidant that they would be seeing him shortly. He decided that he would have to be satisfied with what information he had, but he wasn't going to completely give up the quest for knowledge of his friends and the Order. He sat down at his desk and began to write, the sounds of the quill scratching filling the room just as the room began to fill with morning light.

_Dear Remus_

_I'm checking in, as requested. Things have been a little tense here, without even including the fact that the Dursleys don't seem to want to even look at me for fear of a row. One of the kids __Dudley__ bullies around a lot told his parents, and they went to the police. __Dudley__'s really done a number on this kid a few times. Anyway, the police have telephoned with a complaint twice now, and they may be coming round to visit sometime soon. Don't worry, I won't do anything to alert them to the existence of magic._

_Please write back with something to keep me entertained. I'm going starkers here, and I don't think Dumbledore would appreciate me going out and getting attacked by another bunch of dementors once again._

_Harry_

He folded up the letter, and wrote only "Remus Lupin" on the envelope. Hedwig was fast asleep, but it only took a few minutes of gentle stroking of her feathers for her to wake, hooting softly. She nibbled his palm affectionately, and looked at him with her great amber eyes, waiting for instructions.

"Good morning, Hedwig," said Harry. "This letter is addressed to Professor Lupin, and I'm not quite sure where he is right now. You seem to have no problems finding him though. Really, it can go to any member of the Order, but I just address them to Lupin."

She stuck her leg out and he attached the letter to it. He opened his bedroom window, and she flew into the morning sun. He watched her fly until she turned and he couldn't see her anymore.

He paced around the room until the brown owl that brought the _Prophet_ in the mornings flew through his window. He took out his money bag from his desk drawer and looked inside. He didn't have much left, as he hadn't been to Gringotts since his third year at school. Mrs. Weasley, who had gone to Diagon Alley for Harry his last two years, had taken only the gold she needed to buy his school things out of his vault, and no more.

He paid the owl, and sat down to read. There wasn't much of note. A witch in Baulking had been arrested for flying too high over a muggle town; Ministry of Magic Obliviators were hard pressed to find all the muggles who had seen her, as she flew over a local cricket match. A wizard in Hogsmeade claimed he had been possessed by You-Know-Who, gone to the Shrieking Shack and vanished it to the moon, but investigators, acting on the clue that the Shrieking Shack was still quite in one piece in Hogsmeade, deduced that he drank a spoiled Ergot Potion, and hallucinated the whole thing.

There were two interesting pieces of news. Since Hermione had told him about the _Prophet's_ ability to slip important information into little tiny columns and articles, he had been reading it much more carefully. It was a good thing, too, as the articles were set in so small print that Harry almost needed magnifying lenses in order to read it.

 The first one provided an update on a couple of people he had been wondering about.

**Ministry Disappearance**

Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, announced in a brief statement that the post of Senior Undersecretary to the Minister would be filled by Arthur Weasley.

The statement contained no information about the whereabouts of the previous Senior Undersecretary, Dolores Umbridge. Miss Umbridge spent much of the year as High Inquisitor of Hogwarts, and also enjoyed a brief stint as Headmistress of Hogwarts School while Albus Dumbledore was believed to be a disruptor of the Ministry, but once Dumbledore's claims of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's return were accepted, she vanished from public life. Attempts to contact Umbridge through owls have failed thus far, and her home in London has apparently been deserted.

Weasley has been in the service of the Ministry for many years, heading the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. Although his record isn't entirely clear – he was fined for owning a flying Ford Anglia – he is known around the Ministry to be level-headed, and especially talented when it comes to handling Muggles.

This appointment comes as small surprise, as Weasley's son, Percy, is currently the Junior Assistant to the Minister, several levels below Weasley Sr. Besides the possibility for family-advancement, this position places Weasley in a prime position as a future candidate for…

Harry had last seen Umbridge being chased from Hogwarts by Peeves the Poltergeist, but since then, no one seemed to have heard from her. He wondered where she went, as she apparently wasn't at home. He wouldn't have been surprised if she was taking a long vacation, or even if she was currently in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, since she had a very unfortunate encounter with centaurs the week before term ended.

Harry was happy about Mr. Weasley's appointment, though. The Weasleys had always been very poor, and he hoped that Mr. Weasley's new job, while allowing Dumbledore to have better access to Fudge through Mr. Weasley, would also bring more money into the Weasley home. Harry scanned the rest of the article. There was no news of the argument between Mr. Weasley and Percy that had plagued the family throughout the previous year. He assumed that they were at least on speaking terms, as they both were working directly for Fudge now.

The other article contained information he was sure Hermione would be overjoyed to hear, but he wasn't so sure of the effect on Ron and himself.

**Dumbledore Passes Reasonable Restriction Restructure**

Albus Dumbledore, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, has successfully pushed his amendment to the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Magic through the political machine. The modification allows Hogwarts students who have received at least an "Exceeds Expectations" on four or more Ordinary Wizarding Level tests to practice magic outside of school, as long as sufficient anti-Muggle precautions are put into place. Before the law was passed, students under the legal adult age, seventeen, were barred from using magic outside of school in all but the most extreme situations.

In a statement, Dumbledore assured the magical community that this modification wouldn't lead to the necessity of tripling the number of Ministry Obliviators, as some of the opposition to the amendment claimed. "In effect, this amendment allows students, and only those who have shown themselves to be extremely responsible through their schoolwork, to continue their education and preparation for N.E.W.T. classes between their fifth and sixth years. Since the majority of students are already legal adults by the end of their sixth year, they have already been allowed to do magic for some time. Besides, since the students in question will be able to use magic, they should be perfectly capable of performing Memory Charms to cover up their mistakes themselves."

The law does not come into effect until the results of the O.W.L.s taken during the recently completed school year are delivered to students, at which time eligible students will receive details about the change. The results are expected to be sent to students soon.

            Harry thought that, no matter how much she complained or worried, Hermione was bound to get "Exceeds Expectations" on all of her O.W.L.s, if not "Outstanding." He sighed as he remembered his own performance during his O.W.L.s. He figured he had done well on Defense Against the Dark Arts, at least, but as for the others? He wasn't so sure. He knew he probably failed History of Magic, as his vision of Sirius had happened during the middle of the exam, and so he didn't complete the test. Astronomy was similarly interrupted by Umbridge's attempt to sack Hagrid, and so Harry wasn't expecting a very high grade on that, either. Most of his other tests, besides Divination, seemed to go pretty well, and Harry thought that he probably passed at least a few of them.

            The rest of the house was waking up now. He could hear Aunt Petunia's sickly sweet voice coming from down the hall as she woke her Dinky-Duddy-Dums. Although his boxing performance was still good, his academic performance, as always, had been abysmal during the previous school year. As a result, he had to take summer classes in order to prevent being kicked off the school's boxing team. Dudley didn't take well to summer school, as it limited the amount of time he could go around practicing boxing moves on unsuspecting ten-year-olds with his gang. The threat of losing the ability to punch people without any fear of legal retribution seemed to motivate him, however, and Harry had been witness to a very strange sight already in the week he had been back: Dudley studying.

            He could hear Uncle Vernon singing in the shower again. Although they were very quiet when he was around, the Dursleys tended to unwittingly make up for the lost noise when they thought he couldn't hear. Uncle Vernon had taken to singing in the shower, although he would always mix up the words to the songs, and he never really knew what the tune to any of them was supposed to be.

            "It grips you so hold me,

            It stains you so hold me,

            It hates you so hold me,

            Fastlove is all I've got on my mind"

            Harry sat and listened to the mumblings of Uncle Vernon as he got dressed and went downstairs. He could hear Aunt Petunia fussing over his suit and tie, and Uncle Vernon giving Dudley "sound economic advice." Before long, however, he could smell the scent of burnt bacon drifting up from the kitchen below. Harry no longer had to cook breakfast in the mornings, although he had done so the last couple of days, as he was fed up with Dudley burning everything already.

            He opened the door to his room and walked downstairs. As he walked into the kitchen the morning conversation died instantly. He put on an incredibly fake smile that, when passing the mirror in the entry hall, looking amazingly like Uncle Vernon's business smile.

            "Good morning, everyone! I could tell it was time to get up when I heard the bacon screaming in agony."

            Dudley looked furiously at him, but Harry merely broadened his grin and sat down. Once his aunt and uncle seemed reasonably sure nothing else was coming out of his mouth – in other words, when he started eating – they continued their previous discussion in low whispers. Harry caught bits and pieces of the discussion, which seemed to center mainly around Dudley's summer school.

            "He'll pass, and we won't have to worry about it any more."

            "… how will he live… the embarrassment… what WILL the neighbors say?"

            "Petunia, I'm sure we will have no problems."

At this point, Uncle Vernon shot a nasty, purple look over at Harry, and Harry got the idea. He got up from the table, and left to go upstairs. He couldn't resist a parting shot with Dudley, however.

"Nice job, Big D. Now if only your grades were as good as your cooking…"

The sly smile on Dudley's face surprised him, but not nearly as much as Hedwig did when he opened the door back into his room.


End file.
